Punishment with Kisses

by Diane Anderson-Minshall

  “That’s the police’s job, Megan. Let them do it!”

  “How can you sit there and say that? When letting the police do its thing is why you’re being reviled in the press. If we’re ever going to clear our names, we have to figure out who killed Ash!” I was yelling now, trying hard to get through to her.

  “I hate to break it to you, honey,” Shane drawled. “Ashley was most likely killed by some enraged lover, or someone’s jealous husband or girlfriend. Your sister was a tramp and she pissed off a lot of people and clearly one of them killed her. End of story!”

  “How dare you!” I shouted at the jab, aghast at what Shane had the nerve to say to me. I was sincerely shocked. This was the woman I’d professed my love to, and here she was suggesting my sister deserved to be brutalized.

  “Megan, it’s just that you’re obsessed with Ash. You’re reading her journals, acting out scenes from her films. It’s not right.”

  “Gee, you never complained earlier when I was acting out scenes from her home movies. Was it only good if I’m acting them out for you, then? Or are you worried I’m getting too close to the truth, Shane?”

  Now it was her turn to be shocked or act it. Well, fuck her, then. I’d go find that sex diary myself. I’d find my sister’s killer myself. I didn’t need her or her bullshit any more. I grabbed my purse and my keys and headed toward the door. Shane had other ideas.

  She caught my arm and yanked my shoulder back. “Wait!”

  “Fuck you,” I snarled.

  “Hold on, I didn’t mean—”

  “What? You didn’t mean I was obsessed? You didn’t mean my sister was a tramp who deserved to die? What didn’t you mean, Shane? Or was it you didn’t mean I should stop acting out scenes from the sex videos? What is it?” I flailed my fists ineffectively against her broad chest. I wanted to hurt her. I wanted to run down the street shrieking and pulling out my hair. My sister was never coming back. She was dead and no one, especially not the people closest to her, seemed to even care! It was so wrong.

  Shane folded her arms around me and pulled me into a bear hug. “I’m sorry about all of it, babe. I didn’t mean what I said. I’m just overwhelmed.”

  And as with all of our arguments, Shane and I went from zero to sixty to bed within minutes, neither of us ever really forgetting or forgiving what had been said. We had angry, reckless sex that left me slightly bruised, but still horny in the morning. But by then I’d forgotten the sheer animosity I felt the evening before, and as I watched Shane sleep, I thought again about how beautiful and serene she looked with the morning light shining on her face.

  “You’re watching me again,” she mumbled without opening her eyes.

  “That’s true.” It was a game we played on the weekends. I woke early, I watched her sleep, she caught me and feigned embarrassment. Today, though, she rolled over and wanted to talk. It made me immediately suspicious.

  “Where should we look for this infamous sex journal then?”

  “You’re going to help me? I thought you didn’t believe in me.”

  Turns out she did believe in me, she just wasn’t sure she believed in the existence of this secret journal. We made plans to head out to Lake Oswego after dark so we didn’t have to run into the parental units. Father would be agog to know that I was still seeing Shane—after he’d made it so clear that he was ordering me not to. So avoiding him and Tabitha was critical. Tabitha had been lovely to me, calling me at least a couple dozen times since the murder, always to talk about nothing really. I enjoyed those conversations, which felt both meaningful and vacuous at once, always on the precipice of something, but what I never knew. It was usually me who rushed her off the phone as I was on my way to something more important, even if that was often just another page of Ash’s diaries. I still wasn’t sure she’d keep my secrets from Father, so I’d kept her at arm’s length. Even so, I was trying to be more mature, and I’d slipped into calling her Tabitha instead of stepmonster. Our relationship had finally transcended animosity. But old habits died hard.

  *

  That night, Shane and I dressed in black like cat burglars and drove out to the estate hoping the lights would be out by the time we arrived. All but Maria’s were, and I was fairly confident our sixty-something maid wouldn’t get up and run out to the pool if she caught a glimpse of our flashlight.

  I snuck over the fence, almost musing to myself about how ironic it was Father never installed better security after the murder. That’s how men are, though, they always feel safe. Or maybe he felt like it was too late, the worst had already happened. Still, he often left Tabitha alone in that giant house, when that should have given him pause. Like I said, men were overconfident in everything. He probably thought a security system was a sign of weakness or failure. Or worse, he thought Ash deserved what happened to her. Whichever, tonight it was a godsend because we pulled open the back gate, grabbed the hide-a-key under the rock where Ash always left it, and walked right in.

  It made me wonder if the murderer did the same thing.

  Shane would have made a terrible jewel thief. The moment we got inside the pool house she started shaking and fidgeting. I don’t know what she thought might happen, but I could see from the light of the moon that her face was glistening with perspiration. Between that and the nervous twitch, I felt like I was breaking and entering with that disabled comedian, the guy who can’t stop the tremor in his hand.

  Shane was one step from hysterical laughter when I whispered in her ear, “It’s okay, babe. We’ll be out of here in a minute.”

  “Yeah, I know, but being here creeps me out. I haven’t been here since that night.”

  And then it was me who was totally creeped out. A year and a half after my sister’s murder, we were standing on the very site and I was finding out that my girlfriend was here the night Ash was killed. I knew she hadn’t been telling me the whole story. So was that her engine that gunned? What the hell? I was wondering what I was thinking returning to the scene of the crime, at night, with a woman some people suspected of being Ash’s murderer. Was I secure in my convictions about Shane’s innocence?

  I expected Shane was omitting something, but I had never imagined it would be something as critical as her being here that night. Or had I? That night I was sure I heard her motorcycle. Wasn’t that what I’d wanted her to disclose all this time, even if I didn’t want to admit it to myself? But what else had she kept from me? What if she had more to do with my sister’s death than I was willing to acknowledge? Could she have changed her mind about coming with me because I was getting too close to the truth? Was it her idea to lure me out here in the dark of night and dispose of me too?

  “Oh God.” I didn’t realize I sighed it out loud.

  “What?” Shane said urgently. “What’s wrong?”

  “Oh, nothing. I’m just overwhelmed. Can you go wait for me by the car?”

  Shane didn’t budge. She stared at me quizzically for a moment then finally relented. “You sure? I can handle it. I’m better now.”

  “No.” I urged her to leave, to return to the car and keep an eye out on the street in case we were followed. I told her it would be safer for us that way. Plus it was true, standing here in the place where Ash died did overwhelm me. So little had changed since that night, save for some bloodied tiles that had been replaced.

  As soon as Shane stepped outside, I locked myself into the safety of the cabana. It was disturbing that locking myself into a crime scene felt safer than being outside with my girlfriend. I used my flashlight to meander through the rooms, rummaging behind shelves and under the dresser. Then I went back to the old cedar closet, a storage space that had always been kept padlocked shut even though it held only old prom dresses and Mother’s wedding gown. Maybe it now held Tabitha’s gown too. I wasn’t sure. In the years after our mother died, Ash and I would pick the lock with a bobby pin, climbing in Mom’s dress and pretending we were about to be married to the man of our dreams.

  I wonder
when Ash stopped imagining the man of her dreams and imagined the woman instead. Or had she given up on matrimonial love by the time she switched to girls? She was certainly a cynic by the time Tabitha came around, though the two of them hit it off instantly. In those early years, Ash and Tabitha were thick as thieves, shopping together, sharing clothes, and sunbathing topless when Father and the gardener weren’t around. By the time Father was constantly railing on Ash to keep her clothes on, Tabitha had stopped joining her, but still Ash never once ratted the stepmonster out.

  That was uncharacteristically selfless of her, I thought. Maybe she was just loyal to the stepmonster. Who knows? Either way, the contents of this closet might or might not contain Tabitha’s dashed dreams but they would always primarily belong to Ash and me.

  I picked the lock as swiftly as I had at fourteen, cracking open the door and inhaling the cedar that flooded the room. When I was younger I wondered why every closet wasn’t made of cedar. In rainy Oregon, I learned, that wouldn’t be a wise thing to do.

  During those years of trying on Mom’s dress and playing “I do,” we discovered that the green-brown-gold flecked shag carpet had a section at the back that pulled the entire rug up and exposed a floorboard that wasn’t attached to the others. We felt like Indiana Jones opening it the first time and discovering inside it was another opening to the left that was too small for a man’s hand but perfect for my tiny girl hands. Inside that was a pile of notes, a beer can, and a half smoked doobie on a feathered roach clip. Clearly, we weren’t the first teens to live at Casa Caulfield.

  Though the notes were cryptic kid stuff, we envisioned they were love letters hidden by a tortured princess or Anastasia, before she remembered she was the queen of Russia, or whatever she was. We made up all sorts of silly games, creating lavish stories about the kids who came before us and why they hid secret messages in the floorboards here. We smoked the joint but left the Billy beer can intact, in part because Ash said it would taste revolting and part because it was like our homage to those teens before us and their secrets. When Mother died, she left us without any traditions. Father never cared for tradition, or celebrations for that matter, and Tabitha was from a piss poor family she couldn’t wait to escape. That’s why she married Father, they said, to get out of the house. I wasn’t sure if that was true, but it would make sense because she didn’t bring a single family tradition with her. She also didn’t bring a single family photo to the house either, at least not as far as I’d ever seen.

  Even though Mother left us without any traditions, carrying on the secret hiding space from the kids who came before us became the one shared custom we carried on. Over the years we honored it with more pot, birth control pills, love letters, fake IDs, and bad report cards. We even put our diaries there as kids, which made it all the more ironic that I didn’t think to search there earlier. It was so long ago, I couldn’t imagine Ash having a secret so dark she still had to use that hiding spot when she had the privacy of an adult.

  So I cracked open the hole and shoved my hand through the small aperture, the sides scraping my arm and pushing splinters inside my palm. My fingers crawled along, feeling their way past the dirt and dead bugs until my hand stumbled on the thing I had been looking for all along. A leather bound diary and a bottle of perfume. The image on the front of the bottle was faded but clearly that of a woman wearing tall boots and nothing else, and the brand name, Nana de Bary, sounded oddly foreign, but when I spritzed a little in the air, it smelled like my big sister was there in the room with me.

  Chapter Twelve

  The real sex diary of Ashley Caulfield, September 14

  It happened last night. It hasn’t happened in years, but it happened last night and it was terrifying. Well, wait, let me fill you in on the back story. Who knows if in my drug addled state I’ll ever remember these things in weeks to come. I like Pat. I don’t mind doing scenes with Pat, my pudgy, bisexual photographer. He bottoms for me and takes my photos and usually sets up great scenes with me and other women. Pat is always great at finding masochists who want to be bullied and pushed around, yelled at and tormented by a bitch like me. Sometimes I’ll play with men, too, but Pat almost always sets me up with chicks probably because with men I might take it one step too far and Pat knows that. I like to shove my playmates around, show everyone who is boss, at least in the dungeon if not in real life. In real life, they’re all doctors and lawyers, and I’m, well, what exactly am I? A spoiled rich girl with no ambitions. These women don’t care. They let me be an absolute pig about it, too, pushing and berating them until they’re about at the end of their collective ropes, always leaving them wanting and begging for me, for more, for sweet release. But that’s not my job. I don’t have to worry about their needs because the scenes Pat sets up for me are all about me, baby. And last night was no different.

  Except it was. You see, last week I let one of Pat’s bitches switch with me. I’ve been ratcheting things up for months now, so much so that vanilla sex with any one person is just a huge disappointment. Well, except The One. But I can’t have that, now can I? The One isn’t really available, isn’t always there. I have to get my rocks off somewhere, so I turn to Pat and the scenes and the little beggars that I get to push around with my paddles and pleasures. Then I let one of the women switch with me. I let her try to top me. I wanted to acquiesce, to play a good bottom, to let her control me. But it became so real, and I was flashing back to those days, that first day, and I couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t remember my safe words, so I just started shrieking like a howler monkey, right there in the middle of the dungeon. Everyone around me freaked out and ran to me, unlocking my collar and cuffs and trying to soothe me.

  I went home mortified at losing control like that, but then I realized how great it felt afterward. I relived terror and came out the other side of it lighter, calmer. So the next night I went back and bottomed, this time with a pro. I had a dominatrix tie me to the table and drip hot wax down my back, and I felt sensations up and down my spine, but mostly in my clit. I was frightened and aroused, and I pushed that panicky feeling back in my throat and down to my sex organs, and soon my fear was blatant and energizing.

  I had Pat set up a few more encounters this week. All for play parties where I bottomed, sometimes solo, sometimes with a group. Mostly, there were women, but occasionally there was a transguy there too. The vibe was the same, everybody too cautious to push me over the edge. And then last night, what always happens, happened again. I got bored.

  What does a girl do when bondage and domination are no longer enough? When sweet kisses and loving caresses do nothing? When the only way to get off without The One involves taking it deeper and darker until you can’t recognize yourself anymore? Because that’s what I’m doing, but who knows how far I can take it, you know?

  Pat says he can still conjure up a scenario that will scare me into an orgasm—they don’t call it the petite death for no reason, you know—so I’m letting him come up with something that’ll really knock my PVC socks off.

  *

  I was in the middle of telling Shane about Ash’s sex journal, the one that’s more shocking than any of the others I’d already read, when a funny look washed over her face. I hoped to God it wasn’t turning her on, because I could only take things so far and reenacting my sister’s S&M play wasn’t exactly the direction I was hoping to go.

  “What?” I demanded. “Did you already know this?”

  “No, it’s not that. It’s just…” Shane trailed off as she looked away. “I did play with Ash once.”

  “What do you mean you played with Ash once? You did S&M with her?”

  “No, I, um, she asked me to be a part of a sex game with her and someone else and it was kind of humiliating and I don’t want to talk about it. I just wanted you to know in case she wrote about it or something.”

  “What did you do?” I was not shocked. There was little at this point that truly shocked me.

  “I just
said I don’t want to talk about it.” Shane was adamant. “Look, I’m just not going to talk with you about my sex life with your sister.”

  Wow, so they had a “sex life,” did they? I was not sure then if I was relieved to not hear the juicy details of their tête-à-têtes, or if Shane’s reluctance to share meant she was harboring a secret far worse. What that might be, I was not sure, but the mere fact that she participated and enjoyed one of Ash’s humiliating sex games revealed a great deal about Shane, almost none of it good.

  But I was not the sweet girl who fell in love with Shane what seemed like a lifetime ago. I was a chick on a mission, a sexual being in my own right, and I had Ash’s journal to keep ciphering. Fuck Shane. I was going to find Pat, this bisexual photographer who played S&M Cupid for my sister, and uncover what he knew about her death.

  *

  Tracking down Pat was as easy as finding Cynthia. His studio was set squarely atop the gay district in Portland, amid what local queers call Vaseline Alley. But getting him to sit long enough to talk with me was a different story.

  Pat insisted on working while we spoke, so I was following him around all day as we went from one photo shoot to another. It started in his studio with a beautiful woman in a diamond necklace wrapping a striped yellow-and-black snake around her body. It was breathtaking watching her, though the whole scenario begged for a Freudian interpretation. I got the answer when I realized the vixen posing nude in front of us couldn’t have been more than fifteen. Society and the youth culture, what a fucked up duo.

  After the snake girl, we did a location shoot for a gay couple’s wedding photo. It was quick and clean and this time everyone was clearly way over twenty-one. The last shoot of the day was at a nightclub called Holocene where a troupe of chubby drag queens and Rubenesque burlesque performers hosted a benefit party for something called The Fat Experience. Not sure if it was something like Esalen or Scientology, I kept my distance, marveling nonetheless at the surety of the large-bodied folks who were prancing around the stage. To be comfortable in one’s skin must be so nice. Refreshing.